None of the three state channels, which are heavily dependent on commercial ad revs, has noticeably cut back their acquisitions budgets, but they are paying much more attention to pricing details, Mulder says.

Holland’s only ayem program, “KRO Breakfast TV,” will end in June because of budgetary constraints at the state broadcaster.

The situation has been a long time in coming: The show was a jointly run effort by other broadcasters on Dutch channel Nederland 1, but when they bailed, KRO was left holding the bag financially.

Show was expensive to produce and pressures to compete have left the channel putting its cash where it does the most good — in primetime programming.